“He didn’t hesitate to speak to you without an introduction, did he?” persisted Walsh, though with a good-humoured twinkle in his little eyes. “No, Mr. Walsh, he did speak to me, but it was all right. The circumstances made it all right.” He was amused by her readiness to defend Wayne, who was just then chaffing Wingfield about something for Mrs. Craighill’s edification, wholly unconscious that he was being discussed. “They always do,” said Walsh. He turned round in his chair so that he looked directly into the girl’s face. There was no insolence in his gaze; it was merely his direct, blunt way of looking at anything he wanted to see. His eyes were not satisfied with surface observations; they bored in like gimlets. Jean met his scrutiny for a moment and turned away; but Walsh’s eyes dwelt still on her head, then he glanced toward Wayne, then back to Jean again. He seemed satisfied with this inspection and asked her how she was getting on with her studies. When she had answered, his “Um” was so colourless that she smiled; his mind had been on something else all the while. “Your grandfather had never talked to Wayne about the Sand Creek affair, I suppose?” “Yes,” she replied with reluctance; but on second thought she answered him fully. In spite of Walsh’s gruffness and his grim countenance, people trusted him. His sources of information were many because he never betrayed a confidence. His mind was a card catalogue. If an obscure corner grocer at Johnstown mortgaged his home to buy an automobile, Walsh knew it first. The office systems that Roger Craighill delighted in installing had always annoyed Walsh. Now that he was managing his own business his office was conducted with the severest simplicity. He checked his own trial balances; he would, without warning, throw up a window and demand of a startled drayman the destination of a certain crate or cask, to which he pointed with a sturdy, accusing forefinger. It was not for Jean Morley to withhold information from Tom Walsh; it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be imparting it.